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Summary of the impact

Research carried out by the University of Reading's Professor Suzanne
Graham has had an impact on initial teacher education in Modern Foreign
Languages (MFL) in England, the practice of MFL teachers in secondary
schools and universities, and on curriculum and materials development, at
both a national and international level. The focus of the research is the
strategies (mental processes) that underpin successful listening in a
foreign language, how these can be developed in learners, and how teachers
can improve learners' motivation for and attainment in language learning
in this way. The dissemination of these research findings to practitioners
and teacher educators has been delivered in such a way as to improve both
pedagogical understanding of teachers and teacher educators, as well as
classroom practice.

Underpinning research

Graham's PhD (awarded in 1994) focused on issues of transition between
GCSE and A level in MFL. Part of this work outlined the link between
effective strategy use, listening comprehension and
motivation/self-regulation within post-16 MFL study, and produced
important findings regarding the role of metacognition/self-regulation and
combinations of learner strategies in successful language learning at this
level. Issues of motivation, uptake and transition are key to
foreign-language education in the UK, which in turn has implications for
the country's ability to interact and trade with other nations, as well as
for language teacher supply.

This PhD research was followed by a project undertaken at the University
of Reading (2001-2003, funded by the Reading University Research Endowment
Trust Fund), which explored further certain aspects of motivation among
over 600 learners of French in the 16-19 age range (with a focus on
listening in a foreign language). The study provided evidence of the
extent to which learners' metacognitive awareness, their understanding of
how to improve their own learning and their self-efficacy (belief in their
ability to complete tasks successfully) are related to their decision and
motivation to continue language study after the compulsory phase (reported
in Graham, 2002, and more fully in Graham, 2004, 2006a and b). The joint
focus on listening strategies and motivation/self-efficacy made a unique
contribution to the field of second-language learner strategy research.

The findings led to Graham being invited to be part of a collaborative,
ESRC-funded project with the University of Oxford which sought to
demonstrate how teachers can improve post-16 learners' self-efficacy for
and attainment in listening and writing in French through an intervention
study, working with 19 schools, over two years (2003-5). Graham was
responsible for the listening and motivation aspects of the project, with
Dr Denise Santos (Research Assistant 2003-2005, Lecturer 2005-2007,
Independent researcher 2008- ). The intervention involved the explicit
teaching of listening strategies to learners, combined with approaches to
improve their motivation and self-efficacy. In addition, the first phase
of the project explored the ways in which listening strategies develop
over time and the relationship between these strategies and motivation,
resulting in a number of publications.

These findings and publications have fed into two further research
projects, which have also served as impact-generation mechanisms. The
first, undertaken in collaboration with Santos, has been funded by the
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. In its first phase, it has investigated
teachers' conceptualisation of second-language listening, how they teach
it in secondary schools and how it features in textbooks. In the second
phase, it has explored ways of improving language teachers' understanding
of how to teach second-language listening comprehension at Key Stage (KS)
3, involving materials development and tracking of teachers' development.
The second project is an ESRC-funded follow-on study, entitled
`Professional Development Consortium for MFL', carried out by Graham and
the University of Oxford's Professor Ernesto Macaro, which has explored
the extent to which the principles from Graham and colleagues' previous
research can be embedded in classroom practice at KS3.

Details of the impact

Overall, the research has contributed to changes in curriculum
guidelines for MFL in England. While other authors (e.g. Grenfell
and Harris) have published on language-learner strategies, Graham's work
is novel in its focus on listening strategies and on the link between
strategy use and motivation within the context of MFL learning at English
secondary schools. This is reflected in how the author of the first
version of the KS3 Framework for MFL cites Graham (2002) as a study
underpinning the thinking behind the Framework as regards learners'
strategies and motivation1. Although published in 2005, this
initial Framework was the forerunner to the later one (2009).

The most powerful and extensive impact of the research has been achieved
through the two impact-focused projects described in Section 2, one funded
by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, the other supported by ESRC Follow-On
funding secured by Graham.

In the Esmée Fairbairn project, Graham and Santos wrote continuous
professional development (CPD) materials and held workshops for teachers
and teacher educators showing how the listening research (Graham et al.,
2008; Graham & Macaro, 2008) can be translated into classroom
practice. Emails, teacher interviews, classroom observations and CPD
reflective journals from teachers involved in the project show how the
initial research has had an impact on teachers' understanding of
effective listening pedagogy, and how they develop the listening skills
of their learners. One teacher commented on the `seismic shift' in
her teaching approach that the CPD had brought about. A Higher Education
Academy-funded seminar for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and Higher
Education (HE) tutors, to disseminate the Esmée Fairbairn work further,
has contributed to changes in how these tutors teach listening pedagogy to
trainee teachers, and how HE language tutors teach listening to language
students, covering at least 12 Higher Education Institutions (including
Bristol, East London, Manchester, Chichester, Liverpool John Moores, and
others) and future language teachers throughout the UK. Feedback emails
confirm this impact. The listening work was also disseminated to more than
50 ITE tutors and MFL teachers at Language World, March 2013, the major UK
conference for language practitioners.

In the ESRC-funded project, the Professional Development Consortium (PDC)
group, working with teachers from local schools, created videos and other
materials to show how the researchers' findings, formulated into a number
of `Principles' of language teaching (including those concerning
listening, self-efficacy and motivation, from Graham's work), can be used
in practice in the classroom. These are housed on a blog (see http://pdcinmfl.com/)
that has received circa 14,000 hits internationally and were disseminated
at seven workshops around the country attended by approximately 240
teachers from 144 schools in 33 English counties, and 34 teacher-trainers
from 28 universities2. The Education Endowment Foundation has a
link to the blog as part of its promotion of evidence-based practice3.

Graham and Macaro delivered a shortened version of the workshop at the
Harris Federation Training Day (October 2012), a professional development
event run for 13 schools around London, which are attended by
approximately 16,000 students. In the questionnaire administered after
each workshop, 219 teachers and 17 teacher-training providers agreed to
implement the Principles in their teaching/training. Six months later, 11
ITE tutors and over 100 teachers reported (via questionnaires, interviews,
reports or emails) using the Principles in their teaching or training
(with 64 referring explicitly to being influenced by those relating to
listening and 47 by those concerning feedback and
self-efficacy/motivation). Reports from ITE tutors show the degree of
impact on the training of teachers across England (e.g. at the University
of Nottingham, where the Principles have been incorporated into a model of
language learning used on the course; and at HEIs such as Sussex, Newman
and Portsmouth, where the listening research has changed tutors'
approaches to how they teach listening pedagogy). The ITE MFL course
leader at Portsmouth University comments `I have been greatly influenced
by (...) Suzanne Graham's work on listening strategies. The research (...)
has made me review the way in which I present strategies for enabling
young students to access reading and listening to my trainee teachers and
forms part of my training programme'. Graham has also disseminated
information about the PDC materials to teachers in Scotland and in the US
(via a colleague, Professor Jason Rothman). Local school clusters, whereby
workshop participants promote use of the Principles with other schools,
have been established in a range of locations across the country,
including Walsall, Nottingham, Derby, Cheltenham, Newcastle and
Portsmouth, reaching a wide range of schools (e.g. 12 in Portsmouth).
Local Authority advisors have run CPD events based on Graham's research.
The work of the PDC has been presented to the Teaching Agency and the
Department for Education (DfE) and Graham has joined the MFL Expert Panel,
a body which meets at the DfE to consider changes to the MFL National
Curriculum (NC). The PDC blog will be part of the materials issued by this
group for teachers to support the new NC. Graham held a conference call
with the DfE (4 March 2013) advising them of the PDC work, with the
Department agreeing to make it known to their ITE review group, and
describing in an email the model of professional development the PDC
enshrines as `empowering the profession'. They showed particular interest
in the underpinning listening research. The PDC has devised a system
of assessment for language learning to replace the current national
curriculum attainment targets in MFL, which has been forwarded to the DfE
as part of the national curriculum review consultation

In addition, there is evidence that Graham's work is cited in
practitioner guidelines in other countries (e.g.in a Europe-wide guide for
teachers4, reaching thousands of teachers internationally), and
impacting on teaching practice (e.g. in Academic Language courses in Japan
and the US5). The work on metacognition and self-efficacy, as
well as listening, is cited as evidence for the need for curriculum
changes in the US and has informed debate about ML curriculum design there6.

Graham's publications on listening and motivation have been widely
downloaded from the University of Reading's research repository, by
readers from over 58 countries. They appear on ITE MFL reading lists (e.g.
London Metropolitan, Cardiff and Chichester), reaching hundreds of trainee
language teachers, and inform practice-based investigations (e.g. Yan,
2012, based on Graham, 2007) into how to improve language learning in
international contexts such as China and the US. Graham's research has
also fed into In-School Training Services she delivered to Guernsey
schools (3-4 sessions a year in 2006-2011), as MFL Advisor there, and into
a lecture tour at the Harbin Institute of Technology, China, for language
teachers and lecturers (2011), where the research has underpinned changes
to teaching on their Speaking and writing as a Scientist course. A
leader of that programme comments in an email that they now pay more
attention to developing students' listening strategies and `to the link
between strategy use and learning outcomes in our course'.